Vehicle owners, fleet operators, insurers, and others often wish to track the location of vehicles during vehicle operations. Such data may be useful, for example, in fleet operations planning and management. This data may also be useful to track employee locations during work hours, allowing for improved employee oversight and management. Tracking of vehicle location may also allow, for example, automobile insurers to monitor the driving habits of those they insure, enabling insurers to offer financial incentives (e.g., reduced insurance rates) for customers who develop and maintain safe driving habits.
Devices for tracking vehicle locations over time may use a variety of means to collect vehicle location information, including but not limited to Global Positioning System (“GPS”) devices and cellular-network-based location methods (e.g., cell tower triangulation). These tracking devices may upload collected information for analysis to a cloud-based server, for example, using one or more wired or wireless networks.
Unfortunately, tracking devices are often susceptible to tampering or disabling. For example, a person may surround a tracking device with a metallic shield. This may prevent a GPS-based tracking device from acquiring a GPS signal, thereby preventing collection of GPS-based location data. As another example, a user may utilize a jamming device to obscure, overload, or otherwise interfere with a tracking device, thereby preventing collection of location data. Similar devices are also available that may block wireless network transmissions, thereby preventing the tracking device from uploading location data through a wireless network to a server for analysis.